![]() The state is shutting down the rest - massive buildings that once warehoused 13,000 patients at a time - to comply with a federal mandate to overhaul the way it provides psychiatric services. Only now, after 170 years, is the cycle breaking.īy the end of the year, Central State will operate only one hospital unit: a 184-bed secure facility that evaluates and treats criminal defendants who are mentally ill. That history played out in a seemingly endless cycle: good intentions, not enough money, poor psychiatric and medical treatment, too many patients with too few caretakers, abuse and neglect, expose and scandal, and, eventually, high-minded but fleeting reforms. Tilman Barnett, described as violent and destructive, diagnosed as a "lunatic, " never left.īarnett, a 30-year-old farmer from Bibb County, died six months later of a malady termed "maniacal exhaustion." Thus he became not only the first patient but the first casualty in the long and often dark history of one of the nation's most notorious mental institutions, known now as Central State Hospital. 15, 1842, chained to a horse-drawn wagon. MILLEDGEVILLE - The first patient came to Georgia's first insane asylum on Dec. By the end of 2013, only a secure facility for mentally ill criminal defendants will remain. Department of Justice opens an investigation.Ģ010: The state announces it will close most of Central State. The downsized Milledgeville facility becomes Central State Hospital.ġ997: Mental-health advocates begin restoring Central State's cemeteries, where 25,000 patients were buried, many in graves no longer marked.Ģ007: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on the suspicious deaths of 136 state hospital patients, 42 at Central State. Georgia had sterilized 3,284 people, three-fourths of them psychiatric patients.ġ967: Georgia begins opening regional psychiatric hospitals. Census counts 283 patients in the asylum.ġ864: With 30,000 federal troops occupying Milledgeville, William Tecumseh Sherman spares the state hospital from destruction.ġ897: The hospital is renamed the Georgia State Sanitarium.ġ929: The facility gets another new name: Milledgeville State Hospital.ġ937: The hospital begins involuntary sterilizations for patients deemed mentally defective.ġ940s: Electroshock therapy becomes routine as the hospital population grows to 10,000.ġ951: Doctors begin performing lobotomies, using long metal picks to sever fibers that connect the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain.ġ959: The Atlanta Constitution exposes horrific conditions at Milledgeville, the nation's largest psychiatric hospital with almost 13,000 patients.ġ963: Forced sterilizations are discontinued. So I just wanted to let you know just in case he contacts you. “Hey, I’m calling for Atlanta Medical South Campus. Two hours after Smith went missing, his daughter got this voicemail: “I think the first thing you do when you find out is call the police then the family,” Shaketa Sims, a family member, told Channel 2.Įast Point Police and the family said that’s not what happened. Smith’s family thanked Tharpe for finding him and calling police, but they’re livid that the hospital didn’t contact them until he had been missing for two hours. Smith told Tharpe he lived at the house with his mother, but she died in 1999, the news station reported. I said, ‘Can I help you?’ He said, ‘I live here.’” “When I walked up, he was quite disoriented,” Tharpe told Channel 2. “He constantly did not let go of the door knob. Randy Tharpe, who lives along Donnelly Avenue, found Smith walking down the street still wearing a heart monitor and an IV, the news station reported. The story 11PM /soEYSZRPGM- Nefertiti Jáquez August 8, 2018 ![]() More than 24 hours after hospital surveillance cameras captured Paul Smith walking out of ATLANTA MEDICAL CENTER SOUTH - someone found him 5 Miles away at a home along Donnelly Avenue.
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